In technical plants, e.g. in power generation plants or plants of the chemical industry, multiple alarm reports, also called mass alarms, are generated. The alarm reports, which, for instance, indicate critical process states, are usually represented by multiple display elements, which are mostly assigned directly to the corresponding measured values.
The process measured values are mostly identified systematically by task, type and location, e.g. by the conventional power station identification system “KKS”, which is used worldwide in power stations.
Although many technical plants of the chemical industry or power generation have a similar basic structure in relation to their function, they differ in detail considerably, so that the identifiers and components (which are based on a plant identification system) for the measurement points of the process measured values are different for each plant.
Alarm displays which are currently used thus require, for their representation, a project-specific configuration, since each specific process measured value must be linked to a corresponding display element via its identifier.
Changes within the technical plant or technical process are usually isolated with dedicated (assigned) display elements, or represented textually as an alarm line. This procedure is useful only if a small number of information items, i.e. only a few alarm reports, are displayed. However, as soon as a large number of parallel information items are to be displayed, this type of display is not advantageous, since because of the large number of detailed information items, the plant driver cannot gain an overview of the whole situation of the plant.
To represent a mass alarm display graphically, for instance a large number of display elements are arranged so that the plant driver can use their overall image for pattern recognition. However, each individual display element must be separately configured, standardized and arranged in the mass alarm display correspondingly to the plant topology, so that the mass alarm display, when faults occur in the plant, generates specific representations. This representation form of the mass alarm display is associated with considerable planning cost, since every measured value must be wired individually.
US 2005216826 describes a method by which the complex interrelationships in the representation of mass alarms can be made visible without great configuration cost. The described method is used for analysis of process interrelationships. However, process states cannot be represented.
Further disadvantages of the currently used graphic alarm displays, in addition to the high configuration cost described above, are isolated observation and representation of the individual alarm reports. No preconfigured displays which are capable of functioning for multiple plants without prior adaptation exist.